Externalevaluation eng 6

6 YOUTH POLICY COOPERATION BETWEEN

Turkey and Sweden 2008–2010

EXTERNAL EVALUATION

THE YOUTH POLICY COOPERATION BETWEEN

Sweden and Turkey 2008-2010

List of contents Executive Summary ......................................................................................................................................5 Background ..................................................................................................................................................7 A note on concepts ......................................................................................................................................7 Partners and institutional setup ...................................................................................................................8 The Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs ..................................................................................................8 The Youth Services Department (YSD) ...........................................................................................................9 Other stakeholders ......................................................................................................................................9 Project management and coordination ......................................................................................................... 10 Implementation performance .....................................................................................................................11 Project design and project strategy .............................................................................................................. 11 Defined concepts in the youth field .............................................................................................................. 13 Knowledge about living conditions for young people....................................................................................... 15 Establish spaces/networks/platforms in the youth field ................................................................................... 17 Promoted best practices for youth employment ............................................................................................. 19 Increased awareness of provided social services and rights for young people .................................................... 21 Time plan ................................................................................................................................................. 22 Budget ..................................................................................................................................................... 22 Outcomes ...................................................................................................................................................23 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................................25 Was the project feasible?............................................................................................................................ 25 Was the project relevant? ........................................................................................................................... 26 Was the cooperation cost-effective? ............................................................................................................. 26 Was there ownership? ................................................................................................................................ 27 Will project results be sustainable? .............................................................................................................. 27 Annex 1

List of persons interviewed

Annex 2

Summary of implementation and results

Executive Summary The framework for this project on youth policy cooperation between Sweden and Turkey has been the Swedish development cooperation strategy for Turkey 2005–2009. The strategy had two goals: ¾ to strengthen the continued process of democratisation and respect for human rights and ¾ to promote closer links with European cooperation structures and common values.

The cooperation had been preceded by earlier contacts, and a feasibility study in 2006 and the financial framework from Sida, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, provided the conditions for an agreement of a more elaborate project. The project was further detailed in a joint workshop in December 2007 where its design was agreed between the two partners, the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs and the Youth Services Department (YSD) of the Turkish General Directorate for Youth and Sports. The project has consisted of five components under the objectives of promotion of young people’s potential and learning about young people’s needs as well as promotion of young people’s active participation in society and a youth policy which creates interaction and participation. The five components have been: • • • • •

knowledge and acceptance of defined concepts in the youth field; knowledge about living conditions for young people; establish spaces/networks/platforms for actors in youth field; identified best practises to promote youth employment; awareness of social services and rights for young people.

The project was implemented during 2008 and 2009 with altogether 20 different activities under these components, most of them in the form of joint workshops for learning and sharing of knowledge and policies around youth issues.

This evaluation is more of a results or performance assessment than a full evaluation, the reason for this being that all results of the five components and their contribution to the objectives have not yet matured.

The follow up assessment is based on both a review of project results as they were presented in workshop reports and evaluations as well as interviews with stakeholders, including representatives of the two project partners, of other stakeholders such as participating municipalities and provinces, youth centres and youth organisations and individual researchers and youth participants.

The assessment shows that all components have been implemented according to plans and that they generally have achieved the expected results. Project implementation has to a large extent been dependent on and carried out by participating municipalities and provinces and the task of organising and coordinating all these activities with so many individual and collective participants has been a major challenge for the project partners.

The fact that this multifaceted project could be implemented in a rather limited time, according to plans and with good results is due both to a committed leadership on both sides and the quite detailed and strategic project plan, which gave stability to the work. Some of the early activities suffered from language and cultural differences and especially the component on the establishment of joint concepts around youth issues did not fully achieve its intended role as platform for downstream discussions, consultations and findings.

But the overall finding is that the project has provided important contributions to the project and development objectives and that individual participants and youth organisations, participating Swedish municipalities and Turkish provinces have both shared and learnt about youth policy issues, which has created new insights for their respective future work and served as platform for further contacts and cooperation arrangements.

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The project's impact on the policy development is yet early to assess. What can be observed is that local polices in participating municipalities and provinces are likely to be affected by the project, both in Sweden and in Turkey. Moreover, the lessons learned by YSD as regards youth policy thinking will serve as input into the policy dialogue at national level in Turkey, in the forming of a national Youth Strategy and in its continued work with youth centres and youth clubs in Turkey.

Also the fact that no less than 270 different actors/individuals – 104 Swedish and 166 Turkish participants – have been involved in one or several of the 20 project activities is another way of describing the potential outcome of the project. It is quite unique for a project of this financial size to have created so many potential ambassadors for its main findings and results.

Many of the discussions, particularly in the components on youth concepts and youth rights focussed on human rights and democracy issues, and the component on living conditions also supports the EU directive on knowledge-based youth policy development. The observed project link to EU relations, as well as the focus on democratisation and human rights issues, are certainly welcome from Sida's perspective. In this sense the project has certainly been supportive to the goals for Sida's cooperation with Turkey.

In total around 8, 5 million SEK was spent in the project, including the contributions from YSD, the Swedish Consulate General in Istanbul, the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs and the EU Youth in Action programme. The average cost per activity can be calculated at 400 000 SEK and the average cost per participant at around 30 000 SEK. Without any particular references to similar events or projects, it can still be argued that these figures appear reasonable, bearing in mind the rather cumbersome planning of putting all pieces of the project together, for instance for workshops with participants from two countries at different localities and with study visits and the involvement of external resource persons. The cost also covers production, translation and printing of four different project papers in 200 copies in English and 600 copies in Turkish. It can therefore be assumed that resources were well spent.

In a way this three year project – with a two-year implementation timetable – can be regarded as the first phase of the learning curve of international cooperation under joint objectives. The kind of institutional cooperation at heart here – between central agencies, between local governments and between youth organisations – normally takes longer to mature into self sustaining relations than what is possible to accomplish within a two year project. So from this perspective, the project can be regarded to mainly have completed the start up phase of a possible more long term institutional cooperation.

It should also be emphasised that Turkish youth and youth organisations through the project for the first time shared the scene with Turkish government representatives and were listened to in a discussion about youth policies and youth rights. This may, in fact, be one of the most important and lasting results of the project.

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Background As mentioned in the Project Inception report1, the just finalised cooperation project had been preceded by some earlier contacts. Between 2002 and 2004, the Swedish Institute and the Swedish Consulate General in Istanbul had funded a small project aiming at sharing of experience in the areas of youth policy, development of youth organisations, gender equality and integration with EU. Delegations of the two countries in the youth area also made reciprocal visits in relation to the inauguration of the EU “Youth” office in Ankara.

New funding for a continued cooperation was made available within the framework of the Swedish official cooperation strategy with Turkey for the period 2005–2009. According to the strategy, the goal for cooperation with Turkey would be − to strengthen the continued process of democratisation and respect for human rights and − to promote closer links with European cooperation structures and common values.

The strategy further specified that activities would be focused to two areas: (i) support for human rights and (ii) cooperation in support of Turkey’s integration into Europe. Although youth cooperation is not specifically mentioned as an option or channel for the support, it was still considered relevant in relation to the two goals of the strategy. The actual youth cooperation project was moreover built on the pillars mentioned in the strategy as regards integration with Europe, being a cooperation between government authorities, between municipalities and between NGOs. Following a feasibility study in 2006, an agreement between the two major partners, the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs and the Youth Services Department of the Directorate for Youth and Sports was signed in May 2007. The project was detailed in a comprehensive Inception Report, dated February 2008, which was built on and also included a report from the LFA workshop in December 2007, when the project was formulated by Swedish and Turkish stakeholders. Project progress has been reported in semi-annual reports to Sida (August 2008, February 2009, August 2009 and February 2010) and briefer quarterly reports for the quarters in between the semi-annual reports.

The Inception report included a section on Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), and subsequently Terms of Reference were defined and a consultant (SPM Consultants) was hired for the task. This is the report from the M&E assignment.

A note on concepts Although the terms of reference for this assignment refers to an “evaluation”, it should be emphasised that the final impact as regards mid to long term effects of the cooperation project has not yet matured at the time of the writing of this report. Interviews and other information reveal that continued contacts – between state authorities, organisations, municipalities/regions, researchers and so forth – may well be one sustainable result of the project, generating effects which are not possible to assess and cover at this stage. Also the possible policy impact in terms of changes and modifications in national or municipal youth policies will take longer time to materialise than what can be captured within the framework of this report.

For this reason the report is labelled “results assessment” rather than “evaluation”, which conceptually would require a focus on the higher levels of the objectives, i.e. not only the results in relation to expected outputs and the project objective of “promotion of the recognition of young people’s potential and of young people’s needs”, but also the development objective of “increasing active participation of youth in society”. The focus of the report is rather on the more tangible results at what normally is referred to as “output level”, i.e. the results generated by the project, with comments on likely or actual results as they can be observed so far in relation to the higher objectives. However, brief comments will also be made of the project's performance in standard evaluation categories, such as feasibility, relevance, cost-effectiveness, ownership and sustainability.

1Youth Policy Cooperation between Turkey and Sweden, Inception report, February 2008

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The project was initially formulated at an LFA workshop in Ankara in December 2007, and a project monitoring matrix was defined as tool for the monitoring, including indicators of performance. However, due to time constraints the indicators largely became formulated as “type” of information to be used to verify performance and not (also) defined as “targets”, expressing the expected improvement or tangible result.

Some of the indicators chosen do now, with the benefit of hindsight, also appear as less useful than anticipated. The discussion of results is thus based both on results in relation to set indicators but mainly on a qualitative assessment of actual and verified results.

Partners and institutional setup The Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs The Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs is a government agency that works to ensure that young people have access to influence and welfare.

The Board’s focus areas are: • producing and communicating knowledge about young people’s living conditions; • following up the objectives set for national youth policy by the Riksdag (the Swedish Parliament) and by supporting municipalities in their youth policy work; • distributing funds to the civil society in the form of support for organisations, projects and international cooperation. All the support is given on behalf of the Swedish government.

The general target groups for the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs are: • decision-makers; • civil servants; • organisations (working with young people, women, homosexual, bisexual and transgender people, national minorities, ethnic minorities etc.).

More specifically in the youth field the target groups are: • decision-makers, officials and interest organisations working with youth issues at national, regional and municipal level; • youth organisations and association leaders; • young people, including young people in municipal youth councils and assemblies and young people who do not usually participate in international youth exchange.

The Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs has rather extensive experiences of international cooperation, although not from projects of the size and partner involvement as the present cooperation with Turkey. The Board is moreover actively contributing to the formulation of a new framework for European cooperation in the youth field.

The responsibility for the youth policy cooperation project with Turkey within the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs remained with the International Affairs department, although in close cooperation with other related departments. In addition to the officers in the project management function several other employees at the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs were engaged as resource persons in different areas.

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The Youth Services Department (YSD) YSD is a department of the General Directorate of Youth and Sports, a government office in Turkey under the Prime Ministry which was established according to constitutional articles 58 and 59 for “Protection of the Youth” and ”Development of Sports”.

According to article 58, “the state shall take measures to ensure the training and development of the youth into whose keeping our state, independence, and our Republic are entrusted, in the light of contemporary science, in line with the principles and reforms of Atatürk, and in opposition to ideas aiming at the destruction of the indivisible integrity of the state with its territory and nation. The state shall take necessary measures to protect the youth from addiction to alcohol, drug addiction, crime, gambling, and similar vices, and ignorance.”

The General Directorate for Youth and Sports has its main focus on working with youth directly through services mainly in the area of sports and leisure time activities. It is composed of 59 sports federations, being 56 of them are autonomous, and 12 departments, one of which is the Youth Services Department.

YSD carries out activities for young people to utilise their leisure time with social and cultural activities. It is the only state institution in Turkey that organises special programmes for youth. The Department is in charge of providing services and implementing programmes for youth, youth leaders and youth workers through eight sections responsible for youth centres, youth camps, celebrations and cultural activities, youth NGOs, guidance, counselling and research, children’s games and international relations.

Project responsibility for the cooperation project was assumed by the section for international relations.

Other stakeholders In addition to the main project management institutions a large number of other actors have been involved in one or several project activities. On the Swedish side four municipalities, with representation of politicians, civil servants and youth councils, have been particularly active in several of the components: Nacka and Sundsvall in the component on knowledge on living conditions of youth; Sundsvall and Kiruna in the rights' awareness component; Kristinehamn (especially) and Kiruna in the component on youth employment, and Nacka and Kristinehamn also participated in the component on youth concepts. Other municipalities took part in some of the activities in youth concepts, awareness of youth rights and youth employment (Mora, Karlstad, Spånga/Tensta, Södertälje). On the Turkish side no less than 17 provinces were involved in the youth knowledge component.

On both sides parliamentarians at national level have taken active part, especially in the component on youth rights. Other resource persons include researchers, civil servants and journalists. A number of Swedish organisations have been involved as facilitators or reference objects, mainly, Communicare, Basta Yes and Demokratiakademin (the latter serving as facilitator in several workshops). A large number of study visits were made in relation to several components, including Turkish authorities and organisations responsible for unemployment and private sector development, vocational schools, enterprises and so forth. Moreover, LSU (the national Swedish youth council) as well as NGOs in both countries were actively involved in workshops and study visits, particularly in the component on youth rights.

In fact, most of the activities in the programme have been driven by all these stakeholders, with the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs and YSD acting mainly as workshop organisers and coordinators.

On the funding side, Sida has been the main source of financial resources, but contributions have also been provided by YSD, the EU Youth in Action programme and the Swedish general consulate in Istanbul as well as extra funding and resources from the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs.

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Project management and coordination According to the agreement between the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs and YSD a steering group was entrusted with the task to monitor the project and to approve the progress reports to Sida. The members of the steering group have been the heads of YSD and the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs' department for International affairs and the members of the working groups or reference groups in each organisation. The steering group, also referred to as the project leadership, has met twice, in Stockholm in November 2008 and in Ankara in February 2009. At the last meeting, there was no representation from the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs’ management. Minutes from these meetings are recorded, although they are not formally agreed between the partners.

The reference groups have been responsible for the planning and implementation of project activities, and each group has been lead by a project leader or coordinator. The reference groups have met several times, and coordination has also taken place in relation to workshop activities in the various components. Before semi-annual reports have been submitted to Sida in accordance with the agreement, consultations on the content have been held between the two reference groups. The reference group meeting in May in Istanbul 2009, which was dedicated to the preparations of the final conference in Ankara, also served as a kind of steering group meeting, involving the heads of the responsible departments.

There was an unexpected change in leadership in the working groups on both sides: first the Turkish project coordinator was called to do compulsory military services and secondly the Swedish project coordinator went on maternity leave. From the outside, these changes seem to have been undramatic, although the handover, particularly within YSD was not smooth and it took some time for the new project management in YSD to gain control of the work. The change in management also led to some communication problems in the sense that the communication between the working groups had to be translated from English to Turkish.

Besides this, the cooperation has generally been working well, although the tight work programme has required a lot of extra work particularly on the Turkish side.

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Implementation performance Project design and project strategy As mentioned in section 1, the project was formulated in the form of an LFA-workshop2 to which 20 Swedish and Turkish participants were invited, representing youth organisations and youth clubs as well as public youth institutions. The workshop ran over three days and built the project design from a problem tree over to an objectives tree and selection of priority objectives to be achieved in the project. The workshop was concluded with consensus around a project composed of five components under the objectives to • promote recognition of young people’s potential and learning about young people’s needs, • promote active participation in the society by young people and promote a youth policy which creates interaction and participation.

The five components (or outputs) that were identified to support the achievement of these objectives were formulated as • knowledge and acceptance of defined concepts in the youth field; • knowledge about living conditions for young people (in pilot communities); • establish spaces/networks/platforms for actors in youth field; • identified best practises to promote youth employment; • awareness of social services and rights for young people.

The intended strategy was to address youth problems and constraints both from a top down perspective – improving decision-makers' knowledge about living conditions, finding good examples and best practises of youth employment schemes and establishing platforms for young people’s access to information and services – and a bottom up perspective of increasing the awareness among young people of their social rights and rights to access to social services.

For the purpose of this review, the defined logframe has been transformed into a results chain (following the Results Based Management terminology), maintaining exactly the same content.

2 LFA = Logical Framework Approach, a standard process for project and programme formulation

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Fig: Results chain of the cooperation project

Knowledge and acceptance of defined concepts in youth policy.

Knowledge about young peoples’ living conditions in pilot municipalities.

Established spaces/platforms /networks in the youth field

Recognition of potential and needs of young people 13 – 25 years;

To increase active participation of youth in society and to promote a youth policy which can create suitable interaction and active participation

Promotion of best practices for youth employment

Awareness of social services and rights for young people

outputs

outcomes

impact

The figure describes that the various activities under each output/component are expected to generate results at the output level and the combined result of the outputs will create the results at outcome level (project objectives), which in turn will contribute to create impact (achievement of the development objective). The results chain also assumes a time line, implying that the activities have been implemented during 2008–2009 and that the results at higher levels can only be assessed from 2010 and onwards.

Annex 2 includes a review of the status of the implementation of the activities under each component as well as summary assessment of the results obtained of each component. The rest of section 3 contains a narrative presentation and assessment of the achievements, including the time plan and budget follow up. Each component is presented along the following structure (i) strategic justification, (ii) activities, (iii) budget and actual cost and (iv) expected results and actual results.

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Defined concepts in the youth field Strategic justification Partly due to the cultural differences between Sweden and Turkey, also in the area of youth policy, it was found important to find and establish a common language and common understanding of concepts used in youth analysis and youth policy development. Therefore the first component had the purpose of defining basic concepts, such as “youth”, “youth policy” and “youth actors” and so forth. In the planning of this component, the EU perspectives of youth as e.g. expressed in the “European White Paper on Youth” were regarded to be relevant.

Activities The main input for this component was presentations and discussions led by resource persons from Sweden and Turkey before an audience of youth organisations, government and municipality representatives and youth workers. During the first workshop a survey on the understanding of essential youth concepts was launched among the participants, 14 from each country, with the intention to repeat it after the full implementation of the activities of this component. The purpose was to provide opportunity to assessing changes in the understanding of essential youth concepts among the participants, serving also as performance indicator for the component. The baseline survey showed significant differences as regards the understanding of youth policy (all Turkish respondents saw youth policy as support to transition to adult life, whereas Swedish participants understood it as either an instrument to involve young people in society or to enable young people to affect policy making), and the components of youth policy (where Turkish participants defined it as mainly education, health and family related issues, and Swedish participants included all types of sector policies).

The presentations and discussions took place in two workshops, the first one in Sweden in April 2008 and the second in Turkey in May 2008. The participants were partly the same in the two workshops, and so were the resource persons. There were initial problems of finding relevant resource persons, and also background and profile of the participants from the two countries differed quite a lot. On the Turkish side most young participants were university students with an academic background, whereas the Swedish participants were younger and less experienced in youth policy matters. The workshops demonstrated some important differences, both as regards youth policy issues and in the actual conditions for youth to express and affect youth matters in the local environment. The Swedish professionalisation of youth organisations was quite remote in the Turkish context, where voluntary work was the main way of organisation and action. Important differences were also made visible and discussed as regards the two cultures and their views on values such as the role of the individual in relation to society, countryside and urban life, gender and so forth.

The internal evaluation from these two workshops showed an appreciation of between 3,5–4 in a scale from 1 to 5.

Budget and actual cost The total budget for this component amounted to SEK 790 000, and the actual cost landed at 558 600 SEK. The major part was used for travel and accommodation costs in relation to the workshops, but amounted to considerably less than expected.

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Expected and actual results As mentioned, the main expectation was to produce a project paper on youth concepts, laying the platform for the remaining relations and components. However, due i.a. to translation problems, the paper with the title “Introduction to Youth Policy – Swedish and Turkish Perspectives” was published in the fall of 2009, well into the project implementation period. It can therefore be concluded that the paper did not obtain the initially expected importance of serving as a kind of analytical tool to be used in the other components. It was also intended that the paper would serve as one guideline for the survey on living conditions for young people, but for the same reason this intention was not fulfilled.

The paper includes three parts: an exposé of the Swedish youth policy, a similar review of the development of the Turkish youth policy and a comment of the definitions of youth policy concepts with references to the EU White Paper on Youth. The paper reveals that there are some pertinent differences between the formal policies, where Sweden possess a formal youth policy, which puts emphasis on youth as a resource, whereas there is yet no comprehensive Turkish youth policy. The Turkish Constitution states that the State has the responsibility to train and develop youth into responsible persons and to protect youth from addiction to alcohol, drugs, crime and so forth.

The result of this component was to assess the level of application of defined concepts based on the baseline survey and the follow up survey. The follow up survey was done in December 2009, during the final project conference (see below), i.e. well after the two workshops in 2008. Less than half of the participants were present at the final conference and responded to the survey (4 Swedish and 7 Turkish participants). It is therefore not possible to do a quantitative analysis of the (eventual) changes in perception. A qualitative approach shows though that more Turkish respondents than before express that youth policy should aim at including involvement of youth in society and that the content of youth policy should cover all or most policy areas, although with emphasis on education and employment. In this regard the views of the Turkish and Swedish participants have come closer.

This is further underpinned by interviews which testify that local and national Turkish stakeholders now view youth policy as something broader than providing good leisure time and opportunities, and that policy development in the area must include contributions and involvement from different social sectors. One policy difficulty on the Turkish side is that youth-related matters are dealt with by 9 different ministries and 23 institutions.

The component of youth concepts may not have served as the intended platform to facilitate communication between stakeholders. Likewise did the project paper, mentioned above, not come this far. It does, however, include two overviews of the Swedish and Turkish youth policy evolvement, which serve as baselines for the cooperation relations and also for individual learning and contemplation. The presentation of the White Paper and the subsequent discussion of its relevance for the project also gave food for thought on both sides.

From this perspective, the first project component has increased each partner's knowledge and understanding, both of the policy and other conditions of the other partner, but also of its own priorities seen from the perspective of the other partner's side.

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Knowledge about living conditions for young people Strategic justification The problem analysis clearly pointed out that there is a general lack of knowledge, especially among municipal politicians, about the social and economic circumstances of young people’s daily life. Hence, in the efforts to develop a youth policy or youth projects this lack on information might constitute a missing link, luring local politicians to come up with answers to the wrong questions.

To overcome the information gap, three questions needed to be answered: − What knowledge do we have about young people at the local level? − What knowledge do we need? − Which questions should be asked if we want to learn more about young people?

Activities This component is related to a survey instrument designed by the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs, the LUPP survey (Local follow up of youth policy), which provides municipalities with information about the situation for young people and can serve to develop an effective youth policy.

Throughout this component, research support was provided by a Swedish researcher3 as regards design, implementation and analysis on the survey. He also drafted the project paper regarding this component, “You get what you ask for – Using surveys to learn about young people” (see further below).

The working groups in the two countries first defined and selected municipalities which would do the survey.

In Sweden the municipalities of Nacka and Sundsvall were selected. The initial intention was that these two would cooperate in a kind of twinning arrangement with two Turkish municipalities each. However, since the Turkish municipality level has a limited mandate in youth policy affairs, the provincial level was identified to be more suitable for doing the surveys. In the end, no less than 17 provinces were selected in Turkey. The reason for this broad selection was that YSD found it important to introduce this tool to as many provinces as possible, rather than just a few.

Two workshops were conducted in this component: the first in Turkey where the methodology was discussed and the surveys were designed, the second in Sweden where the results were presented and the issues of how to best use these were discussed. The surveys had different orientations: the survey in Nacka focussed on leisure time activities of youth in grade 8 (14–15-year-olds) in two schools, whereas the survey in Sundsvall looked at the safety situation and leisure time activities in a neighbourhood. The Turkish survey was centralised in the sense that YSD prepared the content and that the same survey was carried out in all 17 provinces with the help of youth centre staff. The survey eventually covered 4 590 young people in Turkey.

The Turkish surveys showed interesting differences between Eastern and Western Turkey, with youth centres being much better known among young people in the East, probably due to broader variety of services provided in the west.

At the workshop in Sweden it was decided to include activity 19 (pilot project with municipalities) from the Inception report into this component. It was initially part of the component 5 addressing “awareness of social services and rights for young people” but was considered to fit better with the follow up of the surveys. As such it eventually comprised progress reports relating to the action plans on the future use of surveys, which came out as result of the workshop in Sweden.

In the internal evaluation, participants gave the workshops an average score of 4,4–4,8 out of 5.

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Jonas Bjälesjö, Linnaeus Umiversity

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Budget and actual cost The budget for this component was initially estimated at 760 000 SEK. Again, the bulk was to be used for travel and accommodation costs in relation to the workshops. Actual costs amounted to just over half of the budget, 404 000, due mainly to savings in consultancy fees and reimbursable costs.

Expected and actual results The selected performance indicator in this component simply expressed that the surveys were expected to be fully implemented and that the results would be presented in all pilot municipalities in 2010. The fact that the intended twinning at municipal level never materialised also means that the whole idea about “pilot municipalities” became redundant, and that the component became somewhat less built on sharing and learning between municipalities in the two countries. Despite this, the workshops involved many discussions on survey methodology, survey results and action plans. The surveys were presented and shared with other stakeholders at the final conference. On the Swedish side, both municipalities are quite satisfied with the surveys, and especially Nacka expressed satisfaction with the way the survey was undertaken in the form of an assignment agreed between the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs and Nacka, which gave the work a higher status and more attention than otherwise. The survey was also broader and deeper in relation to previous surveys. In Sundsvall, the survey disclosed a sense of insecurity among youth in the local area of the survey, which was not previously known to municipal decision-makers.

On the Turkish side, stakeholders found that they for the first time got to know about the demand about the leisure time activities among youth in their province – they saw it as a first “photo” of the situation – and several youth centres had already responded to the results by providing new services at their centres in cooperation with the youth. Examples of this were internet services, café, library and better relations with the schools and teachers in the province. Most of the interviewees would also want to adapt the survey better to local conditions and include more aspects the next time they plan to undertake a survey. Some of them also thought it was a missed opportunity to not have visited a Swedish youth centre when they were in Sweden for workshop.

Seen from the perspective of the performance indicator the expected results have been achieved. Surveys have been conducted, analysed and presented and action plans have been elaborated. Another result is that the component has created better relations between the national actors (YSD and the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs) and the local authorities. YSD has explained a willingness and intention to continue supporting surveys of living conditions for youth on a broader scale in Turkey. The Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs is already promoting surveys in Sweden, and the way the two participating Swedish municipalities were contracted by the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs to do the survey may have increased the seriousness among municipal stakeholders to perform and use the instrument in the forming of local youth policies.

Interviews confirm that the lack of a common language did not facilitate mutual learning between Swedish and Turkish local governments, regardless of the fact that the twinning concept never could be introduced.

Despite this, contacts have been established and the knowledge about the realities of young people’s situation in the two countries has increased.

The project report from this component, “You get what you ask for”, is both a methodological paper, explaining and discussing the survey method, and an independent comment4 on the results obtained in the various surveys conducted, and how survey results can be used to improve municipal youth policies with examples from other Swedish municipalities with such experiences.

Although the twinning concept may have highlighted this even further if it had been feasible, the sheer project setting in an international context has been an added value and of benefit for the stakeholders involved.

4 Also by Jonas Bjälesjö, Linnaeus University

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Establish spaces/networks/platforms in the youth field Strategic justification This component consisted of two types of activities. The first was the launching of a joint website to serve both as library of documents produced and results obtained during the project and as forum for stakeholders and other actors in the two countries to communicate and learn about each other and about youth policy and youth cooperation. The purpose was to provide a platform where a broader segment of youth and youth organisations could benefit from the results of the project and to establish relations and form alliances and cooperation arrangements.

The second type of activity was to plan and implement the final project conference, where project results and outputs were to be discussed and shared with stakeholders of the project and also with external stakeholders such as parliamentarians, international organisations and media. The purpose here was of course to bring all stakeholders together, to share the results of the different components among stakeholders and to present the results to a broader audience.

Activities The website, www.ungenc.net, never achieved its intended role as forum for contacts between Swedish and Turkish youth and youth organisations. The website was launched in English, but it seems that particularly Turkish, but also Swedish, youth organisations and young people did not command English to an extent that facilitated establishment of direct relations. The website has therefore mainly served as provider of information about the project and a store for project documentation as well as documents of youth policy in Sweden, Turkey and the EU. Based on a request from YSD in June 2008, funds intended for the project website were used to promote YSD's recently launched national website through training of young people from 35 cities in 7 regions in Turkey to become “ambassadors” of this website. As a kind of compensation, YSD committed to do the technical/programming work of the project website without any cost to the project. This was agreed and equivalent of 10 000 EUR was spent for this purpose.

For the preparation of the closing conference, two preparatory meetings were held according to plans in April and September in 2009 respectively. These meetings also served as joint working groups meetings.

In fact, also the contact-making seminar in Sweden, which initially was planned as an activity under component 5 (“awareness of social services and rights for young people”) is more relevant under this component. This seminar, with participation by youth workers in the two countries, was funded by the EU Youth in Action programme and took place in Sweden with purpose of creating a meeting place and cooperation projects between youth workers within the framework of human rights. The workshop suffered from both implementation problems and selection/language difficulties: the Turkish participants did not command English to an extent that the meetings became useful and they also came with expectations that they were invited to a cultural youth exchange event, not workshops and presentations of Human Rights issues. Initially the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs had hoped to engage youth from some of the participating municipalities, but this was not feasible.

Budget and actual cost The total budget for this component amounted to 760 000 SEK, of which the lion's share for the final conference (estimated at 560 000 SEK). The actual cost reached the double, 1 450 000 SEK, and especially the hotel cost amounted to much more than initially anticipated. Sida had previously agreed to transfer funds not used in other parts of the project to costs related to the arrangement of final conference.

The website was budgeted at just over 100 000 SEK, and these funds were thus mainly used for the promotion of the YSD website in Turkey. Actual cost amounted 138 200 SEK.

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Expected and actual results The performance indicators for this component were two: (i) that the website would be established and actively used (subscribers and number of hits) and (ii) that exchange of views between youth organisations would be established. The last indicator would also be seen in the perspective of increased cooperation projects between Sweden and Turkey within the Youth in Action programme.

As the presentation above shows the forum part of the website never materialised so the expectation of increased exchange between youth organisations and youth in the two countries was not fully achieved.

However, the project has in general provided many opportunities for participating organisations to develop deeper relations and cooperation arrangements. As example, the Swedish youth umbrella organisation, the National Council of Youth Organisations, has established stronger links than before with the Youth Service Centre of Turkey, which most likely will promote further and broader relations between youth organisations in the two countries.

Concerning the websites, statistics from the YSD show that the project website (www.ungenc.net) has attracted no less than 11 760 subscribers and enjoyed on average 240–250 visits per day. This is somewhat surprisingly more than the YSD webpage (www.gspg.org.tr) with 6 250 subscribers and 180–190 visits per day. YSD claims that the training of multipliers and “ambassadors” has facilitated the introduction of the YSD webpage in all provinces in Turkey. Participating Swedish municipalities complained that it was complicated to upload documents, such as the surveys on living conditions on the project webpage, but in fact all these surveys can be downloaded from the website. Some other important project documentation, such as the project papers from the components, can also be downloaded from the project webpage.

Although the contact seminar did not meet the initial expectations, visits to institutions such as the Delegation for Human Rights, the “youth cultural project officer“ of the City of Stockholm and the political group Feminist Initiative were appreciated.

The impact of the final conference is yet too early to assess. However, it was a quite impressive event which attracted more than 110 participants, among them central and local government officials, researchers and youth organisations. The conference was opened by the Turkish State Minister responsible for Youth and Sports and the Swedish State Secretary for Integration and Gender Equality. Also high representatives from the EU and the Council of Europe were present during the opening ceremony. Both the components and the final conference have also led to a number of contacts not only between youth organisations, but also between researchers, journalists, local and national politicians (although the latter category on a lesser extent than expected).

The media coverage of the final conference was largely covering the opening session.

The internal conference evaluation showed that the Turkish participants were very satisfied with the conference (average score for the overall conference: 4,6 out of 5 ), and that the Swedish participants were satisfied (average score for the overall conference: 3,8 out of 5). Swedish participants had wanted more of interactive workshops and discussions and less of presentations in plenary sessions.

One of the selected indicators, the change of Swedish–Turkish cooperation projects within the EU programme Youth in Action, is not particularly related to the project, but is anyway an interesting piece of information on the youth cooperation relations. Statistical information from EU shows that there were 3 volunteers from Sweden going to Turkey during 2007–2009 (all actually during 2007) and that 15 Turkish volunteers went to Sweden during the same period, with 3 each of the years 2007 and 2008 and 9 in 2009.

Altogether there were 32 applications from Sweden for cooperation with Turkey to any of the project categories under the Youth in Action programme, of which 15 were granted support (mainly for training and networking and exchange projects). Likewise there were no less than 194 applications from Turkey which had cooperation with Sweden, of which 71 were granted support (27 for exchange programmes and 23 for networking and training). The trend in applications was increasing, particularly from Turkey, whereas the ratio of granted project was decreasing (from 50% in 2007 to 40% in 2008 and only 30% in 2009). The main reason of this trend is budgetary or qualitative aspects of submitted applications.

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Promoted best practices for youth employment Strategic justification One of the most highly rated problems in the problem analysis in the LFA workshop was the issue of providing employment for young people, and particularly for those with disabilities. Both Sweden and Turkey have high rates of youth unemployment. For this reason, experiences in the form of best or good practises became a strategic component of the project. Already from the start it became evident that support from researchers and decision-makers would be necessary inputs into the component as well as practitioners' experiences. Moreover, it was decided to document the results of the activities in this component and a journalist was hired to produce a summary document.

Activities Three workshops were conducted during this component with about 20 participants each, mostly youth workers on the Turkish side and practitioners and municipal civil servants on the Swedish side. The first workshop focused on youth employment issues in general and was held in Turkey in November 2008. It included presentations of the labour market situation in general, the labour market policy and programmes for young people in the two countries, the system of apprenticeship and non-formal education in Turkey and examples of youth entrepreneurship in Sweden. Presentations were made by the Turkish Employment Organisation (ISKUR) and Centre for Small and Medium Enterprise Development (KOSGEB). These organisations were also represented by participants in the different workshops in Turkey and Sweden.

The target for the second weeklong workshop was to study practical examples of and discuss how cooperation between schools and enterprises could facilitate for youth to enter the labour market. It was also held in Turkey, in Ankara, in March 2009. This workshop also included study visits to vocational schools and training centres, and was finalised with a session on lessons learnt. The third and last workshop was conducted in Sweden in April 2009 with the purpose to provide experience on creation of employment opportunities for disabled youth. It was also a weeklong workshop, held in the city of Kristinehamn, and which combined lectures and practical and theoretical experiences with study visits to work places and schools with successful experiences on providing employment to youth with disabilities.

The final activity, or rather output, of this component was the project paper “Possibilities and opportunities – best practises for young people on the labour market from Turkey and Sweden�, which was published in 2009.

Budget and actual cost The budget for this component amounted to 950 000 SEK, of which the main part on travel costs in relation to the three workshops. The documentation had a budget of around 70 000 SEK. The actual cost for this component was 690 000 SEK, again with considerable savings on reimbursable costs for travel, accommodation and meals.

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Expected and actual results The performance indicator here was to have best practises in the form of models/methods for youth employment, with special focus on disabled youth, ready for presentation to municipal decision-makers.

There is no report about the status of the situation as regards implementation of methods as result of the activities, but interviews confirm that the learning and insights provided through the workshops have been quite substantial. For YSD, this component has also served as a kind of eye-opener, clearly demonstrating that youth employment issues must be an essential component in youth policy development, regardless of the fact that YSD does not have a formal mandate to work with these issues. Representatives from youth centres and organisations for disabled praised particularly the way the Swedish municipalities worked along individual approaches and programmes for disabled youth, empowering them and seeing them as resource, and not following collective plans for dealing with a “problem group”. On the Swedish side, the way that Turkish schools worked with enterprises to facilitate entry to the labour market was found commendable.

It can be argued that the workshop did not display best practises in the sense of models for youth employment for easy replication at local level, which was expressed as the performance indicator. Yet, the experiences of practitioners such as Klivet, Communicare, Basta Yes and others have led to initiatives for future cooperation, and are likely to be shared and implemented in the coming few years. Already before the end of this project, local initiatives of youth democracy projects within the Youth in Action programme has been granted and is carried out during one year and a half, and other projects are underway.

The project paper from this component with the title “Possibilities and opportunities – Best practises for young people on the labour market from Turkey and Sweden” includes two research comments on the labour market with recommendations for policy changes (in the Turkish comment5) and for the whole approach to youth employment (in the Swedish comment6). The paper also includes the documentary report on the implementation and findings of the workshops in the component.

In the evaluation of the workshops, some participants, including resource persons, found that too much time had been spent on lengthy and formal presentation of systems and organisations rather than on successful examples of how work can be organised at local level in order to best assume services and resources provided by vertical systems benefitting youth employment.

This component was also highlighted during the final conference, both with plenary presentations and discussions and with group sessions for sharing of experiences. Given the weight of this issue, also from a policy perspective, it could be emphasised that it was a pity that the political level, primarily at national level, was less involved in these workshops than, for instance, in the component of living conditions. It is possible this will pose a hurdle for sharing and application of methodologies.

5 Hakan Ercan: Youth employment in Turkey.

6 Peter Waara: Youth and the labour market in Sweden.

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Increased awareness of provided social services and rights for young people Strategic justification As mentioned in section 3.1 this component had the purpose to address youth issues with a bottom up approach, providing opportunity for young people to discuss awareness and rights issues together with political decision-makers. This was, certainly initially and also later during the project, by some regarded as a sensitive issue, confronting traditional views on the role of young people in society. In fact, the initial project formulation workshop spent considerable time in establishing consensus around this perspective.

Activities Initially five activities were planned in this component: two national workshops in Sweden and Turkey respectively, one joint workshop in Turkey, one workshop to discuss the findings of the surveys of living conditions in component 2 and one workshop in Sweden to serve as contact-making between Swedish and Turkish youth workers. It was later decided to move the survey follow up activity to component 2 (knowledge about living conditions for young people) and moreover, the contact-making workshop to component 3 (established spaces/networks/platforms for actors in the youth field), implying that at the end three activities were undertaken under this component.

The participants in the component represented parliamentarians, local youth councils, umbrella and other youth organisations. The purpose was to let young people from the two countries meet with decision-makers and discuss what kind of services are offered to young people and the rights that young people have in society.

The first national workshop in Sweden in March 2009 focussed on creating awareness of the content and status of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The second workshop in April 2009 in Turkey discussed the rights of young people and more specifically, the lack of youth policy in Turkey. Both workshops were conducted according to the Open Space Method and were facilitated by the same moderator from Demokratiakademin. The joint workshop in Istanbul, where half of the participants from each of the two national workshops met in May 2009, aimed at comparing the results of the national workshops and to plan for future dialogue, actions and projects. Joint statements on youth rights and the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Swedish and Turkish law were adopted and made part of the project paper referring to this component (see below).

Budget and actual cost The total budget for this component was around 830 000 SEK, of which 370 000 SEK from Sida and the balance funded by the EU Youth in Action programme. Actual expenditure amounted to almost 700 000, of which 360 000 costs from the Sida grant and 332 000 from Youth in Action.

Expected and actual results There were two performance indicators defined for this component. The first, “level of knowledge and awareness among youth in pilot municipalities” was also included in the first component and, as mentioned under 3.2 could not be used for analysis due to low response rate. The second selected indicator, “level of knowledge and awareness among decision-makers and youth workers” suffers from a similar weakness in the sense that there was no baseline study done before the workshops. A questionnaire was circulated among the participants in this component during the final conference. However, only a handful were completed, and mostly from Swedish participants. The survey can therefore not be regarded as conclusive on the results of this component.

The workshops did not materialise in any defined future cooperation projects, but there were many examples of networking that in the end may lead to more concrete actions. A joint work group did also lobby for the drafting of an agenda to making the Convention on the Rights of the Child a legally binding document in the two countries.

Interviews also confirm that participating youth organisations found the cooperation, and particularly the joint statements and the project paper, quite useful and that a platform for new relations has been established.

The Swedish participants found the new relations more useful than the learning from the workshops, which

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mirrors the fact that Swedish youth organisations are more established in the political field and that youth issues are more pronounced than in Turkey.

For Turkish youth organisations it was a rather new opportunity to be able to sit together with decisionmakers at different levels, both in workshops and in the final conference, and discuss openly about youth rights. Surely, this will strengthen the confidence of participating in the national policy process.

The expectation that parliamentarians from the two countries would embrace each other in support for youth policy development was not realised, essentially due to poor participation by Turkish parliamentarians, where partisan approaches appeared to be strong.

The project paper, “Strengthen the rights for young people!�, contains, in addition to the above mentioned statements, also a summary of findings from the two national workshops and from the joint workshop.

Time plan The time plan was worked out in the Inception Report after the project formulation workshop. It was quite ambitious and supposed to be completed between April 2008 and October 2009, being wrapped up with the final and closing conference planned for October 2009. In principle all project activities have been implemented in accordance with the time plan, with some minor changes and with postponement of the final Conference until December 2009. This was due to adjusting for the calendar of participation of the Swedish state secretary in the conference.

The time plan has been very tight, partly due to a planning mistake according to which there would be no resources available for project management in the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs after 2009. The tight plan has required much work, sometimes lots of overtime work, from the project management teams, but also contributed to keeping the momentum in each of the project components.

Budget The total Sida-funded budget for the project amounted to 8 619 748 SEK, of which 1,16 million was used for project preparations until February 2008. Consequently, 7,45 million SEK remained of Sida's contribution for implementation of the project. In addition, contributions from other sources were expected to be 926 000 SEK, making up the total project implementation budget to 8,4 million SEK. According to the latest budget follow up, dated February 2010, total disbursements have reached 6,82 million with an additional 630 000 SEK pending to be disbursed during 2010. The final contribution from the Youth in Action programme amounted to 332 000 SEK. In addition, the Swedish General Consulate in Istanbul contributed with 50 000 to the Final Conference and so did also the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs. Finally, YSD has contributed to cover travel and other expenditures related to project activities in Turkey equivalent to 750 000 SEK. Altogether this means that the total external contributions over and above the grant from Sida reached 1 182 000 SEK. The expenditures were supposed to be more or less equally spent on project management7 and overheads on the one hand (52%) and project activities on the other (48%). Considering the rather large input for management (planning, implementation and follow up) of activities, this structure appears to be reasonable.

The actual spending on project management fees seem to be somewhat lower than budgeted, and the overall cost for project management, as per the figures from December 2009, seems to be less than half of the total Sida grant, 47% as compared to the expected 52%.

7 Sida covered project management fees in Sweden only

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Outcomes As was demonstrated in sections 3.2–3.6 the expected (and not expected) results of activities at component level were largely achieved with positive consequences. The bigger question to assess in this section is to what extent these results have contributed to the higher objectives, and particularly to the expected outcome of creating recognition of young people's potential and learning about young people’s needs. The more long term outcome – or impact – is that the project would increase young people's active participation in society and contribute to a promotion of a youth policy which creates interaction and active participation.

Surely the components concerning young people’s living conditions and young people’s rights have created knowledge and awareness of young people’s needs and potential, at least among participants in the related activities. Also the final conference highlighted these issues before a broad audience of civil servants, youth workers, youth representatives and organisations from other activities. However, it is probably even more important that participants, for instance youth workers and civil servants from the 17 Turkish provinces and the two Swedish municipalities, greatly appreciated the survey instrument as a tool for learning about young people’s leisure time priorities and other conditions, paving the way for constructive youth policy development at municipal and provincial level. Many of the interviewed youth workers and civil servants on the Turkish side confirmed that they would continue working with surveys and shaping the survey content so as to suit the local conditions better than in the first centralised version. They also see the survey as way for youth centres to communicate with young people and to market themselves better. Also YSD has declared that they would continue encouraging provinces in general to use surveys on youth conditions. One of the Swedish municipalities confirmed that they did a more thorough analysis of the youth situation than before, and that this was a result of participating on the project.

The joint statements on the rights of young people and the encouragement to parliamentarians in both countries to implement the Convention on the Rights of the Child as law in respective country will be spread among readers of the project paper on the three seminars on youth rights. Moreover, an initiative has been taken by one of the participating Swedish parliamentarians to continue this discussion with their counterparts in the Turkish parliament. One Turkish parliamentarian also confirmed that his participation in the workshops had convinced him to promote youth policy matters in his political party and to have it included in the party programme. He was also prepared to lobby for the development of a comprehensive Turkish youth policy.

The workshops on youth employment also put the finger on the importance of promoting and providing youth employment, both in general and especially for disabled youth. Participating Turkish youth centres and organisations for disabled youth were very appreciative of the way that Swedish municipalities and civil society organisations worked with individual plans and empowerment methodologies and would try to emulate this in their own activities. Likewise, the way that schools in Turkey worked closely with the local business community inspired Swedish organisations.

The project's impact on policy development is yet early to assess. What can be observed is that local polices in participating municipalities and provinces are likely to be affected by the project, both in Sweden and in Turkey. Moreover, the lessons learned by YSD as regards youth policy thinking will serve as input into the policy dialogue at national level in Turkey, in the forming of a national Youth Strategy and in its continued work with youth centres and youth clubs in Turkey. During the final conference there was also participation from other international (EU, Council of Europe, UNDP) and national institutions (universities, authorities) and a good number of opportunities for learning and sharing of policy and related issues with and among them.

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The more difficult question to answer is to what extent the project has affected stakeholders outside the participants in the project, and also to what extent participants have been able to see and share the results of components they have not been involved in? The second question is of course important since the project aimed at achieving learning and maybe establish some kind of synergy and consensus between participants in the various components. To a certain extent there was a cross-wise participation in the sense that representatives of some municipalities and youth organisations participated in more than one component. But most participants have taken part in one or several activities in one component only, and they had not been able to follow the results of other components until the final conference, despite the fact that they had been informed about the whole project at presentations during workshop introductions. During the final conference there were plenty of opportunities to share findings from other parts of the project through interactive workshops, group and plenary discussions. Yet, it is not possible to summarise opinions or to assess the extent to which the project actually did manage to create synergy between participants or participating organisations. However, it is beyond doubt that the knowledge and views on youth policy matters between the two management organisations and participating organisations have come much closer.

The first question, the project's impact outside the participating organisations and individuals, depends on two main circumstances. The first is the extent to which the project papers will be disseminated and the content shared with other stakeholders. Here it seems that the Turkish organisations are more willing to do that than Swedish participants. YSD has already developed a strategy for the dissemination, and declares that they see the papers as very important tools for its further communication with youth clubs and youth in general. The second circumstance is the way that participating organisations are willing to share and disseminate findings, knowledge and experiences with colleagues, policy makers and with a broader audience through articles, presentations and similar ways of communication. On the Swedish side it seems that several of the participating municipalities have learned a lot about issues concerning integration of minorities, not least in relation to youth centres, and that they intend to share these insights with municipality decision-makers. On the Turkish side, both the youth survey methodology and the work with empowering disabled youth seems to be issues that can be expected to be shared with a broader public.

On a general level, the participating municipalities have benefited from the international exposure that the project offered. Through the project municipalities have had the opportunity of mirroring themselves and their activities through the interaction with international partners, which has provoked new reflections on its own work and initiated search processes on policy level. For instance, on the Swedish side, one reflection was the extent to which Swedish municipalities maybe are over-protecting young people instead of trusting them and giving them more responsibilities for youth activities.

The sheer fact that no less than 270 different actors/individuals – 104 Swedish and 166 Turkish participants – have been involved in one or several of the 20 project activities is another way of describing the potential outcome of the project. It is quite unique for a project of this financial size to have created so many potential ambassadors for its main findings and results.

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Conclusions This section will address some of the standard evaluation aspects of a project. The project's feasibility, relevance, cost-effectiveness, ownership and sustainability will be briefly reviewed as part of the overall performance.

Was the project feasible?

The idea was to design a project which first would provide a platform in the form of a common vocabulary as regards youth concepts and youth policy issues in order to facilitate communication, not only between the two countries but also between young persons, youth organisations and decision-makers in youth matters. As mentioned above, the workshops were quite appreciated, and surely demonstrated the differences in reality and policy for youth in the two countries. However, the aspiration of defining youth concepts to an extent that a “common language� or common vocabulary became established was not really realised. The project paper does however provide an analytical framework and policy presentations that serve well for more indepth discussions and analysis of the content of youth concepts. With the same type of philosophy the project aimed at building twinning relations between municipalities, primarily in the component on creating knowledge about living conditions for young people. As mentioned previously, this was not realised due to the fact that Turkish municipalities have a limited mandate to work with youth issues. Yet, although the cooperation never became organised in twinning relations, there was considerable sharing of experiences between local communities in Sweden and Turkey in a wide range of issues.

Likewise, as mentioned above there was an intention that all the components would be summarised at the final conference, providing a sense of synergy among participants, i.e. that the different angles and approaches of youth issues together would promote a release of energy for change. Again, the final conference was no doubt a success and certainly demonstrated the results of the various components, and conclusions on future actions were also drawn. So, although no final declaration or resolution was adopted at the end of the conference, it is beyond doubt that the project has provided lots of foods for thought to participating organisations and individuals.

Despite that some of these strategic considerations were not fully met, the fact that the project was implemented according to plan and budget is evidence that it was very feasible. In fact, it was implemented according to plan despite the unforeseen changes in management on both sides, and the main reason for this was said to be the quite elaborate project plan adopted in the Inception report.

As for the content of some of the workshops some (Swedish) participants thought that there was too much focus on formal presentations of administration and organisation structures during some of the workshops in Turkey, and that this information could have been provided before the actual workshop. This circumstance reduced the time for exchange of experiences and discussions. It seems however that there is a difference in culture around this issue, since many Turkish participants appreciated formal presentations of facts and figures as a value in itself and as relevant background to the subsequent discussions.

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Was the project relevant?

From YSD there is an overwhelming feeling that the project has been very useful and relevant. Both YSD and Turkish youth have seen that youth issues contains a much wider content than providing leisure time activities, and that the concept has a cross-sectoral agenda, covering health, education, employment and other aspects. The fact that Sweden supports the Turkish accession to EU has made a strong impression among many participants, and has even strengthened some youth in their conviction to look favourably towards a Turkish EU membership. It has also provided a platform for more friendly relations between Swedish and Turkish youth organisations, organisations, municipalities and provinces.

From the Swedish side it has been mentioned that many of the discussions, particularly in the components on youth concepts and youth rights focussed on human rights and democracy issues, and that the component on living conditions also supports the EU directive on knowledge-based youth policy development.

The observed project link to EU relations, as well as the focus on democratisation and human rights issues, are certainly welcome from Sida's perspective. As mentioned initially, the overall goal of the cooperation strategy for the cooperation with Turkey has been to strengthen the continued process of democratisation and respect for human rights and to promote closer links with European cooperation structures and common values. In this sense the project has been supportive to the goals for Sida's cooperation with Turkey.

For Swedish municipalities and organisations, the project has given international references which provide a different perspective on one's own activities and political agenda. Swedish participants have had the opportunity to bring back experiences with possible impact on the broader picture at municipal or organisational level. The extent to which this has actually happened certainly varies between participating municipalities and organisations.

Was the cooperation cost-effective?

In total around 8,5 million SEK was spent in the project, including the contributions from YSD, the Swedish consulate general in Istanbul, the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs and the Youth in Action programme. Besides project management, most resources covered costs to overcome the distance between Sweden and Turkey (travel, accommodation, meals) and for hiring resource persons. The average cost per activity can be calculated at 400 000 SEK and the average cost per participant at around 30 000 SEK. Without any particular references to similar events or projects, it can still be argued that these figures appear reasonable, bearing in mind the rather cumbersome planning of putting all pieces of the project together, for instance for workshops with participants from two countries at different localities and with study visits and the involvement of external resource persons. The cost also covers production, translation and printing of four different project papers in 200 copies in English and 600 copies in Turkish. It can therefore be assumed that resources were well spent.

The only item that had to be recalculated to a larger extent was the final conference, which became a lot more expensive than initially anticipated. However, this was a joint decision, and no other activities seems to have suffered from this, but maybe the media coverage could have been wider and deeper, considering the high profile of the venue and keynote speakers.

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Was there ownership?

The project steering group and the two reference groups have had the final management responsibility.

Although the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs mostly has been pushing the agenda – being the signatory in the agreement with Sida – decisions have been taken in a consultative way. Both parties express great satisfaction with the results and confirm that the project has produced a lot of lessons learned, and also being the first larger international project they have been involved in.

From both parties it was also essential that participating municipalities/provinces, youth centres and youth organisations were committed and assumed responsibility and ownership for the activities they were engaged in. On the Swedish side, the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs signed contracts which stated responsibilities and services to be provided. One Swedish municipality expressed that they were very pleased with this way of involvement, since it served as a legal obligation which had to be respected and enjoy support also from the political level in the municipality.

It can not be claimed that all participants in all activities were fully committed to the objectives of the project. The language problem contributed to a certain extent to serve as a cultural divider in off-hours talks and informal consultations. Yet, the overwhelming impression is that most participants enjoyed the activities and found the findings and results of project activities useful and interesting.

Will project results be sustainable?

In a way this three year project – with a two-year implementation timetable – can be regarded as the first phase of the learning curve of international cooperation under joint objectives. The kind of institutional cooperation at heart here – between central agencies, between local governments and between youth organisations – normally takes longer to mature into self sustaining relations than what is possible to accomplish within a two year project. So from this perspective, the project can be regarded to mainly have completed the start up phase of a possible institutional cooperation.

Surely, the potential project impact can not be assessed until after several years and it will rely on additional support to materialise, especially in Turkey, where local communities and youth centres have less resources to develop and adapt ideas further and implement them into full scale solutions.

The twinning strategy could never be realised, which most likely will reduce the scope for a continued and close cooperation at municipal level. Despite this several initiatives for city and municipal twinning have been taken, and the platform for a closer cooperation between youth NGOs in both countries has also been laid.

It should also be emphasised that Turkish youth and youth organisations through the project for the first time shared the scene with Turkish government representatives and were listened to in a discussion about youth policies and youth rights. This may, in fact, be one of the most important and lasting results of the project.

In addition, the survey methodology and usefulness for local policy planning will certainly continue to be used, both in Sweden and in Turkey. The experiences of youth employment will also continue, and with applications both to YSD and the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs to support cooperation in this area, for example through the EU Youth in Action programme. Likewise, the declarations of youth rights and the awareness of the Convention on the Rights of the Child will continue to be pushed, both at policy level and at youth organisational level.

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Annex 1 List of persons interviewed Turkish participants:

Mustafa Cenk, Head of Youth Centres, YSD Vildan Görbil, Head of International Relations, YSD Ayşegül Böke, YSD Pelin Öztürk, Youth and Sports Foundation Ilknur Tasdemir, Provincial Directorate, Malatya Deniz Sigan, Yalova Youth Centre Hatice Yazgan, Provincial director, Bayburt Ahmet Gürol Karaylimaz, Provincial director, Çaycuma, Zonguldak Çagla Duman, Aydin Youth Centre Meliha Yozgatli, Konya Youth Centre Hasan Anuk, Association of Disabled People, Mardin Şennur Sariberberoglu, Youth Centre Director, Bolu Tekin Bingöl, Member of the Turkish Parliament Tülin Şener, Ankara University Öyküm Bagci, GSM – Youth Services Centre

Swedish participants:

Berndt Jendrny, Kristinehamn municipality Thomas Sass, Nacka municipality Mathias Mellgren, Communicare Lena Lago, Basta Yes Education Oskar Eriksson, The National Council of Swedish Youth Organisations Saher Yilmaz, The National Council of Swedish Youth Organisation Sofia Zackrisson, Rädda Barnen Lars Berglund, politician, Nacka municipality Michael Frejd, Entrepreneurship Kista Nils-Erik Lundbäck, Sundbyberg municipality Åke Nyström, Mora municipality Jimmy Rindé Gerdsdorff, Youth Council, Sundsvall municipality Christine Rüdiger, politician, Sundsvall municipality Carina Seger, Sundsvall municipality Magnus Stålnacke, politician, Kiruna municipality Peter Waara, Uppsala University Jonas Bjälesjö, Lund and Linnaeus University Emmy Bornemark, the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs Ihsan Kellecioglu, the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs Karen Austen, the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs Lotta Jarvenius Rössner, the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs

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Annex 2 Summary of implementation and results in relation to indicators defined in the Inception report, dated February 2008 Output/Component

Implementation indicator/activity number/results indicator

Actual results

1. Defined concepts in the youth field

1.1 Level of application of defined concepts based on baseline and follow up surveys

Base-line survey in 2008; follow up survey in 2009

1. Workshop (Swe) April 2008

Implemented as planned, reported in semiannual report August 2008

2. Workshop (Tur) May 2008

As above

3. Document on youth concepts

Slightly changed time-plan, published fall 2009 rather than end–year 2008; initial document of two parts – concepts (I) and LUPP (II) – was later (reported in semi-annual report from February 2009) changed to be presented in separate documents; The document on concepts published in report “Introduction to Youth Policy” in 2009.

2.1 LUPP survey implemented and results presented in all pilot municipalities in 2009

Report “You get what you ask for” published in 2009. Municipal/provincial reports Interviews

4. Workshop (Tur) September 2008

Implemented as planned, reported in activity report 2008-11-19

5. Survey on living conditions October/November 2008

Implemented in two Swedish municipalities (Nacka, Sundsvall); done in 17 provinces in Turkey, not municipalities, reported in activity report 2008-11-19

6. Workshop (Swe) December 2008 on future use of surveys

Implemented as scheduled, reported in semiannual report February 2009

3.1 Youth website established and actively used 3.2 Exchange of views established between youth organisations

No of hits on websites; No of Swedish–Turkish cooperation projects; Interviews

7. Preparation meeting (Tur)

Held in Sweden in April 2009, since Turkish project leader was in Sweden for activity 14, reported in semi-annual report August 2009.

8. Preparation meeting (Swe)

Implemented as planned in Sep/Oct in Ankara, reported in activity report 209-11-20

9. Conference on youth policy (Tur) October 2009

Postponed until 7–9 December, reported in activity report 2009-05-20 and in semi-annual report August 2009.

2. Knowledge of living conditions

3. Establish spaces/networks/ platforms in the youth field

10. Documentation from conference

4. Promotion of best practices for youth employment

11. Webpage (meetings in March and June 2008)

YSD request to use funds for promotion of Turkish website (www.gsgp.org.tr) approved by Sida and reported in semi annual report August 2008; original website (www.ungenc.net) less used then expected, especially the web forum

4.1 Models/methods presented for municipal decision-makers, with special focus on disabled youth

Report and its dissemination and expected impact (interviews)

12. Workshop (Tur) November 2008 Implemented as planned in November 2008, reported in activity report 2008-11-19 13. Workshop on cooperation between schools and enterprises (Tur) March 2009

Implemented as planned in March in Ankara, reported in activity report 2009-05-20

14.Workshop on unemployed and disabled youth (Swe) April 2009

Implemented as planned in Kristinehamn, reported in activity report 2009-05-20, focus on disabled youth

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5. Awareness of social services and rights for young people

15. Report on findings and recommendations from workshops

Report “Possibilities and opportunities” published in 2009.

5.1 Level of knowledge and awareness among youth in pilot municipalities 5.2 Level of knowledge and awareness among decision-makers and youth workers

Document “Strengthen the rights of young people!” published in 2009.

Survey results Surveys in component 1 planned to be used here also as well as a survey to decisionmakers.

16. National workshop on rights with Swedish participants March 2009

Implemented in Stockholm as planned, focus on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, reported in semi-annual report August 2009, Funded by the Youth in Action programme

17. National workshop on rights with Turkish participants March 2009

Implemented in Ankara as planned; funded by the EU-programme Youth in Action, reported as above

18. Workshop with decision-makers and young people (Tur) May 2009

Implemented in Istanbul as planned with half of the participants from activity 16 and 17, common statement on Youth rights, reported as above

19. Pilot project with municipalities (Swe, Tur)

This activity was moved to component 2, reported in semi-annual report February 2009.

The project has been ongoing from February 2009 onwards. Projects have supposedly reported their progress on 1/4, 1/6, 1/9, 1/11 and presented their results at the final conference.

In addition, a national meeting in Turkey was implemented in Ankara in June 2009, focusing on development of action plans for pilot provinces. Also meetings with Swedish municipalities (municipalities of Kiruna – not Haparanda as initially intended – and Kristinehamn) took place in February 2009 to discuss the value of international activities and added values of learning outcomes from this project.

20. Contact-making seminar/citizen rights training (Swe)

Postponed from October 2008 to March 2009 and reported in semi-annual report August 2009. Funded by the Youth in Action programme. Activity suffered from various weaknesses (illness of resource persons, unclear purpose to Turkish participants and language problems).

21. Promotion of youth policy on the Internet (agreed extension of activity 11)

Held in Ankara in March 2009, reported in semiannual report August 2009.

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© Ungdomsstyrelsen 2010 text Lars Rylander, SPM Consultants

distribution: Sweden and Turkey

cover Christián Serrano

website Sweden website Turkey

www.ungdomsstyrelsen.se/publikationer www.ghdb.gov.tr

Youth in Action

Education and Culture